


moonbroch

by bygoneboy



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Abduction, Angst with a Happy Ending, Crush at First Sight, Inspirational Gay Wedding: I've Married My Kidnapper, M/M, Pining, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2019-09-01 06:30:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16759804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bygoneboy/pseuds/bygoneboy
Summary: ivan astor oswald hughes has left home in search of monsters. draco yevkos wonders what he’ll do when he realizes he’s already found one.





	moonbroch

**Author's Note:**

> hello, i'm alive! nanowrimo and the holidays have kept me busy, but i've also fallen deeply in love with dungeons + dragons. these two characters from the curse of strahd campaign i've joined are pretty much all i think about recently, and i wanted to share them with you guys. i know that AO3 is a little wonky on what's considered an original work, but since CoS is technically considered a fandom...?
> 
> it's one in the morning! all my love!
> 
> hal x

  
**I.**

The story is an old one. The ending has been written already, years before it ever mattered, a quiet footnote among the rest of the cursed pages of Draco’s life. Distant memories, half-hazy nightmares, the absence of his parents. His sister, working tirelessly to raise him, exhausted always. The den, his turning, the wolf taking root in his body and blood; the taste of raw meat, vile and undeniably mouth-watering all at once— distant, half-hazy. Only ever vivid in the dreams he wakes from shaking, whimpering, sweat running hot down the back of his neck.

Sometimes, foolishly, he finds himself reaching for the cold sheets next to him. For a body that’s only there once in a full moon, for the only person he’s wanted to hold onto. The only one he’s wanted to keep— but this story is old, and the ending has been written.

And there’s a box of silver between them, damning and irrefutable.

“You know what I am,” Draco says.

“I’d rather hear it from you,” Ivan answers.

So he starts properly, and from the beginning.

**II.**

Months ago now, in a pub sixty miles out from the border, when the door slams shut behind them and no one turns to stare, Draco knows for certain that he isn’t in Barovia anymore.

Cobi stalks past him, pushing toward the innkeep; Jakob and Alexander follow a few paces behind, muttering about the robbery that passes for stable-fare in this country. Leo lingers at Draco’s side, the two of them sweep-searching the room: the early evening crowd is sizable, but the faces are all the same. Farmers with dirt and clay on their hands—blacksmiths and tanners—all grease and ash and sweat. Most are elven or human in nature, although the occasional dwarven head pokes up every now and then a few feet below the rest, all of them working class, shabby, threadbare. Here, Draco thinks, a mark like theirs will be easy to find.

It’s just a job. That’s how he’s been trying to rationalize it, at least; the word _abduction_ doesn’t sit well in his mouth or mind. But there are only a few reasonable answers you can give to Strahd Von Zarovich when he asks for something, and Draco has always considered himself to be a reasonable sort of man.

“Do you see him?” says Leo, close to his ear.

 _I don’t think so,_ Draco answers. Or starts to answer, at least, instead trailing off halfway through, “I don’t…”

It’s faint at first. Just the whiff of tobacco and clove. His wolf follows the scent to the source easily, neat rings of smoke trailing toward the ceiling— and finds the man himself, slumped over a rickety stool in a dark corner, cigarette in hand. He has a series of leather notebooks open on the table, half-formed sketches and ink-blotted notes crammed in-between; he’s absorbed by it, his free hand propped under his chin, lips moving silently as he absentmindedly mouths the words on the page. 

“Don’t _stare,”_ hisses Leo, who’s seen him, too. He throws one arm over Draco’s shoulder and drags him away, steering the both of them toward the bar, “I’ll let Cobi know we have eyes on him. Stay here, keep your head down.”

“Agreed,” Draco croaks, gripping the edge of the counter with one hand, reaching numbly for the stool behind him. His voice sounds faint, too far away to be his.

“You all right?” Leo thumps him good-naturedly between his shoulders. “Get a drink, yeah? Make sure he doesn’t go anywhere.”

He disappears into the crowd, ducking his head; at the bar, Draco sits, hard. He calls for a pint, polishes off half in one go. Tries to be subtle— glancing over his shoulder, braving quick, fleeting looks. Behind his curtain of smoke in the corner, Ivan Astor Oswald Hughes rubs wearily at one temple with the tip of his thumb, stubs out the end of his cigarette on the table, and fiddles with the cuff of his sleeve, all crisp lines, starched collar, ivory buttons—

Draco orders another drink.

Maybe it’s being here, in foreign lands, on the first even playing field of his life. Or maybe it’s seeing him, suddenly not _just a job_ but flesh-and-blood, someone all-too real. Watching him light up another cigarette, like he has all the time in the world. Watching as he shakes the flame from the match, knowing he’ll be dead before the year is up. It’s like being struck to the bone. Like the breath has been knocked from his lungs, feeling dizzy, reeling, as though someone has gripped his windpipe and squeezed. It’s the very first time Draco looks at him and thinks, _I can’t do this._

It’s far from the last.

**III.**

They track him for three months.

It’s almost a cat-and-mouse game— or it would be, if the cat in question was pulling a long con, and if the mouse was eating out of its hand. Ivan is chasing a long-suffering dream of three-ring freaks and carnival lights; the vistani, chasing Ivan, ensure that he never finds it. They puppet him into the cities they choose and onto the roads they want, dropping the wrong tips at the right time, paying off seedy strangers to pass on false information, and drive him onward, miles upon miles from home, closer every day to the Barovian border.

There are sometimes weeks of nothing but holing up in taverns, waiting for Ivan to make his next move. They take shifts to keep an eye on him— in case he gets spooked or decides to bolt, Cobi says— _these foreigners,_ Cobi says, disgusted. A shift in the wind, and they change their tune.

And as much as he hates to agree with his cousin, Ivan is very much like that, Draco is forced to admit. Indecisive, impulsive and restless. He works with a furious, manic sort of energy, his nose constantly stuck in a book, scrawling out near-illegible notes without looking. He doesn’t sleep much, he forgets to eat— picky with his food, prickly with people. Snappish and surly to common folk but overly eager towards anyone with a hint of coin on their person. He has a fussy, annotated list of complaints for nearly every inn they visit: the rooms are drafty, the wine is watered down, the beds aren’t made. He keeps thick journals stuffed full of designs of his own creation. He starts impossible projects, and seldom finishes them— he’s brilliant. And nearly impossible to stand.

At the very most, he should be difficult to like; at the least, he could use a lesson or two in either humility or hypocrisy. He holds himself with his spine steeple-straight. He takes his tea with two sugars and three spoonfuls of cream. He smiles rarely, hidden behind his hand.

He rolls his own cigarettes.

Shifting the tobacco into a thin, steady line, twisting the ends with a practiced hand. Licking the paper sealed in a careful, fluid motion, a small concentrated crease between his brows, eyes lowered, lashes dark against his skin. They stack up in neat piles, two-by-two-by-two—

And Draco watches, helplessly, from taproom shadows, behind tavern tankards, the wine going slow and heavy to his head, his eyes fixed on Ivan’s mouth.

**IV.**

A few days before Ivan meets Barovia, they stop for the day in a small pub town. While Jakob leads their horses to the stables, Cobi ushers the rest of them into the bar across the street. Outside the clouds have darkened and the weather has turned angry. Sheets of rain rattle at the warped glass of the windows, and the wind has the support beams creaking, but it’s dry inside, at least, and Cobi seems to be in good spirits. He orders the first round for everyone— a show of support, he tells them, before the last stretch— and they play a few rounds of _geas_ with Alexander’s tarokka, cursing and joking, flipping coins to the winner.

It’s easy to forget what they’re here to do when it’s like this, the four of them crowded into the little red-cushioned booth, thunder rolling across the sky outside. It’s easy to pretend that they’re here on caravan errands, selling trinkets, trading wares—

“Draco,” says Cobi coolly, not looking up from his cards, “get the next round, would you?”

From across the booth, Leo gives Draco a look, one that he’s beyond used to— the _you don’t always have to do what he says_ kind of look. But he’s been dealt a shitty hand, anyway, so he shrugs good-naturedly, tosses his cards onto the table, and heads to the bar.

The taproom has filled up quickly in the time they’ve lost fooling around. More than a few locals have apparently ducked in for a pint and relief from the storm, so he puts in his order and settles in to wait, drumming his fingers against the counter as the bartender tops off tankards and pockets tips. “Do I know you from somewhere?” comes a voice from his left, low, warm; Draco turns his head, some sort of amiable dismissal on the tip of his tongue.

His heart promptly leaps into his throat.

Ivan’s eyes are green.

He hadn’t known that.

“What?” he says, stupidly.

“Have we met?” the potion-maker rephrases, looking Draco up and down with his head tipped to one side. His stiff collar is loosened, unbuttoned at the hollow of his throat. There’s a nearly-drained glass of bourbon held loosely in his hand and it’s definitely not his first, whiskey hanging heavy on his breath, his cheeks flushed.

"I don't think so," Draco manages. He crosses his arms over his chest, hoping it looks intimidating, stand-offish. Ivan smiles in return, all teeth, inviting, somehow. “I’m just— I’m passing through.”

“But you look so _awfully_ familiar,” Ivan persists, slurring just a little, leaning against the bar with one hand propped under his chin. Up close, Draco is hit hard with how familiar his scent has become: cedar-wood, sweet smoke and tobacco— rolling it over his tongue, letting it linger in his nose, “I swear I’ve seen you before.”

“I doubt that.”

"You’re sure?"

"Very."

"Well, then! I believe you,” decides Ivan, bizarrely coherent for someone so completely and obviously sloshed. “Still, I’ve gotta say, you don't seem like the sort of man I'd forget.”

He sways, bourbon slopping over the side of his glass, and steadies himself against the barrel of Draco’s chest, thin fingers curling against the linen of his shirt. And only then does Draco realize that he isn’t serious, that he’s not honestly claiming anything— it’s a tactic. The soon-to-be late Ivan Astor Oswald Hughes is _flirting_ with him.

And it’s working.

“I’ve got a room upstairs,” Ivan says, voice low, leaning close. “If you’d like to get to know me—”

From behind the counter, the bartender slams down a tray of fresh drinks. And Draco jerks up from the bar like it’s burned him, Ivan’s hand dropping from his chest, Ivan’s smile faltering, blinking, blurry-eyed. “I’m— I’m sorry,” stammers Draco, grabbing his order and backing away, feeling sick to his stomach. “Sorry, you’ve just— you have me confused with someone else.”

He shoves his way through the crowd, his heart in his throat; at the table, he passes over the topped-off tankards with unsteady hands. Cobi clasps his arm in thanks as he slides back into the booth. But his cousin smells wrong. Sour. “Here’s to you,” says Draco all the same, lifting his own glass, uneasy.

 _“Salut,”_ Cobi answers, sharp eyes flicking toward the bar, where Ivan has carried on drinking alone, looking a little lost. “Making friends, I see.”

“He’s drunk,” says Draco shortly, picking his cards up again.

“Did he give you any trouble?”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle. Who’s dealing?”

“It’s my turn, I think.” But Cobi doesn’t reach for the deck, his fingers tightening on Draco’s shoulder instead. “We’ve nearly finished,” he says, his voice too light. “You’ll be glad to be heading home, hmm?”

 _“Da,”_ says Draco, noncommittal, “of course.”

“Glad to have it done with?”

_“Da.”_

“A shame about the potion-maker,” says Cobi, and smiles, wide. “He seems like your type.”

“Cobi,” says Leo, disapprovingly; the wolf in Draco’s chest lifts its head, slow, hackles up.

He swallows it down. Stares into his glass.

“Still,” Cobi continues, “the little prick had better pick up the pace. I’d hate for a job like this to get messy, wouldn’t you?”

He’d love an excuse to cut loose, is what he means. He’d love to bleed Ivan like a stuck pig, is what he means. Draco doubts that Strahd likes his food to be played with before it’s delivered to his doorstep, but Cobi, for all his cunning and wit, has little patience for the chase.

“That’s enough,” says Leo sharply, reaching across the table and sweeping the tarokka towards him. “Give me the cards, _măgar_ , you deal like a blind man—”

“Just keep your head in it,” says his cousin softly, gripping the back of Draco’s neck. _“Da?”_

**V.**

He imagines, more than once, running. Telling Ivan everything, taking Ivan out of here. Grabbing Ivan’s hand, daring the others to stop him, daring Cobi to get in his way— letting his wolf creep out with yellowed eyes and canines dripping. They’d go somewhere no one would know them. Where Strahd could never follow, or find them—

It’s a nice thought, anyway.

Cobi’s poison does its work quickly, quietly, and once Ivan has lost consciousness, he motions to Draco and Leo, and the two of them carry him out. Jakob brings the horses around. Alexander patrols the side-streets. Ivan’s head lolls against Draco’s shoulder, his eyes rolled back and his skin tinged sallow, and Draco, his wolf howling behind his ribs, dumps his body in the back of the wagon.

He imagines running. And then imagines a world where he wouldn’t have to, where they would meet accidentally— by chance— like normal people do. On the back-roads between cities, at solstice festivals or troupe shows— where Ivan would put his hand on Draco’s chest and say, _Do I know you?_

And Draco would say, _Would you like to?_

Jakob urges the horses on with a click of his tongue and the flick of the reins. At the back of the wagon, Ivan lies bound, and limp, and unmoving.

In a few days, Draco thinks, none of it will matter.

He’ll never see him again, after this.

**VI.**

His dreams have always been the same. His wolf, running free and wild, clawing out from the cage of his body and baring its teeth. Ripping back through the viscera of his stomach and putting an end to it, at last; Draco or the animal inside of him, no room for compromise.

They leave Ivan unconscious in the woods outside of the Village of Barovia, and by the time they’ve returned to their caravan, the potion-maker is in his dreams, too. Empty-eyed. Head broken open. Neck snapped, neck punctured, drained bloodless, dead. Always dead.

Drima can tell that something is wrong, even after he denies it— his sister has always been able to see straight through him. He tries to put her at ease, hastening back into camp-life routine: working early, drinking late. Keeping busy to keep from thinking about it, how small Ivan’s body had looked, how wrong it had felt to leave him nestled amongst the pine needles and ivy, curled up against the cold—

“Draco,” says Jakob, nudging him with an elbow. “Are you listening?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you want one or not?”

He’s been rolling cigarettes. He’s holding one out for Draco to take. And Draco does, that strange and misplaced grief closing over his head again, remembering the clever dance of Ivan’s fingers over his own rolling paper. The scent of him, how it had crawled between Draco’s ribs and clung to his bones—

“Draco,” repeats Jakob, sounding disgruntled; the match he’s struck is burning close to his fingers.

 _“Scuze,”_ Draco mutters, flushing, and leans forward to light up.

He’s not much of a smoker, in all honesty. But the rhythm and routine of the thing settles his mind, and the fireside conversation is good, and blissfully unremarkable. Elders bicker endlessly, rehashing age-old disputes over nothing, about nothing. A group of younger _vânători_ break open a cask of wine, passing tankards around the circle. Draco closes his eyes, soaking in the sorely-missed comforts of home, Jakob chuckling beside him, his laughter low in his belly, the warmth of the fire, the hiss of embers. The smell of horses, and incense, mingling with another scent, buzzing like static at the tip of his tongue. Subtle, as if he's picking it up on a downwind.

He breathes it in deep, holding it in his lungs. Feeling it settle, warm, behind the bone-cage of his ribs— it smells good. Beyond good. Familiar, whiskey and cedar— and clove, something he could almost put a face to, or a name—

“So sorry to bother you,” says Ivan, standing in front of him with a cigarette between two fingers, tired shadows under his eyes, beautifully, wondrously, unmistakably alive, “do you happen to have a light?”

**VII.**

If he’s going to be honest—

Everything after that is a bit of a blur.

He knows he met some of the travelers Ivan has allied himself with: a loudmouthed dwarven bard, a scar-riddled half-orc. He knows he blurted something about outsiders, about vistani relations. At some point— in a panicked effort to continue the conversation— he thinks he might’ve told a folk tale, words clumsy in his mouth. He can’t take his eyes off of the man, watching him tap the ash from the end of his cigarette, watching the curl of his mouth as he talks. Watching the way he watches Draco, that slow-dawning interest that sharpens to a point when he decides he likes what he sees, _not dead._ Looking at him and thinking _never again,_ thinking— _mine._

He shakes off that thought in particular. Or tries to. _Mine?_

“You seem to know a lot about Strahd,” Ivan says, taking a long drag.

“I do,” says Draco.

“If there’s more you’re willing to share—”

“I am,” says Draco, quickly.

Maybe too quickly.

“Ah,” says Ivan, flustered. “Well, then.” And he considers it, rubbing self-consciously at the bridge of his nose, picking a speck of tobacco from the corner of his mouth, “If there was some way we could, uh, continue this—”

“In private,” says Draco. “In my tent, yes,” and his heart beats out an answer of its own, _mine, mine, mine._

**VIII.**

Halfway through his first glass of mulled wine, Ivan flirts without shame, sly and indirect, settled cross-legged between patterned cushions. And halfway through his second glass, he stops pretending that he’s still here for any information of the vampire variety.

And suddenly both of their glasses are empty, and the bottle is empty, too, or at least forgotten, and Ivan has his head tipped back, his collar pushed away from his neck, Draco mouthing along the sharp lines of his throat.

He tries to help him fumble out of his jacket, out of that clean-starched shirt with far too many buttons, but Ivan insists on doing it all himself. And then insists on folding everything, carefully, meticulous— and finding a clean place to set them, somewhere they won’t wrinkle. By the time he’s begun to unbuckle his belt, chattering all the while about how he’ll need to iron out his trousers in the morning, Draco’s patience has run out.

He knocks Ivan’s hands out of the way. Yanks the belt off himself, tosses it somewhere. Tosses Ivan onto the pile of quilts in the corner, shucking his pants to his knees, to his ankles, off, entirely; Ivan yelps, then protests, half-heartedly, “Careful, they’re custom-tailored—”

“Stop,” says Draco, bracing over him with his blood running hot, _“talking.”_

Flat on his back, oil-slicked hair mussed over his forehead, Ivan snaps his mouth shut.

Then swallows, hard, and says, breathlessly, “Make me.”

So Draco does.

All in all, it doesn’t take much. Ivan is easy to tease, and easier to take apart— grinding against him until he’s completely undone, whimpering, biting at the pillow. Desperately trying to muffle the sounds he makes, those urgent, desperate sort of noises, pitched up at the end, like he’s surprised at it, how good it feels. Flushing ruddy from his chest to the tips of his ears and hooking one leg around Draco’s waist to pull him closer, his hands tangled in his hair— he shudders when he comes, panting sweetly into the crook of Draco’s neck. He comes again, weakly, not a half hour later, with Draco’s head between his thighs.

“I should find my friends,” he says, when he’s breathing half-even again, slumped bonelessly against the cushions. He’s smoked his way through two more cigarettes already; he’s nearly through his third. “It’s late.”

“You don’t have to go,” says Draco.

“They’ll wonder where I am.”

“You could stay,” says Draco.

Ivan sucks hard on the cigarette. It flares orange in the blue shadows of the tent, and in the ember-light Draco sees the spike of something panicked— but then it fades, and he’s blowing smoke, smooth and casual again. “That’s not really my style.”

Maybe it’s better like this. Of course it’s better like this. Draco shrugs like it doesn’t bother him, like he hasn’t committed every second of this to memory. Like he isn’t doing everything possible to keep from putting his mouth on him again, and coaxing out all those sweet scents he’d been putting off before: delight, intimacy, pleasure—

“Although,” says Ivan, clearing his throat and shifting, “I’m fairly certain I could, uh. Be convinced.”

Draco looks at him sideways.

“To stay,” he clarifies, staunchly avoiding Draco’s eyes. “I suppose. You could convince me, that is, in whatever fashion you see fit—”

“Again?” says Draco, startled.

Ivan goes pink. “Look, I— it’s been a while. A long time, by my standards, anyway—”

Draco touches his knee. Settles one broad palm over the flat of his thigh, and the other between his legs, squeezing, watching him squirm and blush, deeply. “Again?” he says, lower, and hears the feeble rhythm of Ivan’s heartbeat stutter and spike.

“Haven't any of you people heard of subtlety?” Ivan mutters. But there’s relief at the corners of his eyes, unmistakable and impatient, and eagerness flooding off of him, intoxicating and thick.

And he’s putting out his cigarette in a hurry.

**IX.**

Draco knows what it means to be the comfort of a single night. No strings attached, a port in a storm. He’s been that man before.

He thinks, naively, that he can be that man again.

Ivan and his companions take their leave in the morning, and it takes all he has to hold his wolf back, to keep it from breaking out and chasing him down, scenting him out, dragging him back to camp by his ridiculous coattails. Back to his tent, his den-nest of quilts and cushions where it’s safe, where it smells right— home, incense and earth. The horses skitter nervously away from him as he forks over fresh hay, his grip white-knuckled on the rake; Drima arches one eyebrow at him from across the campfire that night, sizing him up with half-masked concern. “I’m fine,” he mutters, swatting her off when she catches him by the arm after dinner. “I’m tired, _soră_ , that’s all.”

He had thought it would make it better. To take him to bed and get it out of his blood, to have him once and then forget, easy. But he’s catching the smell of him on his clothes, his quilts, even after he’s gone down to the river to scrub himself clean. And he’s seeing him behind his eyes, the soft flat of his belly, the faint traces of muscle in his arms.

It was only a job. It should have ended there. He had done what he’d been asked to do, or at least he had done most of it; he had left him to the forest, to Strahd’s wilderness— and half of him is terrified, confronted with the awful and wonderful proof that he’s failed.

But the other half remembers the way Ivan had looked asleep, in the early reaches of the morning. The softness in his face, hair dark and disheveled on his pillow; how much younger he’d seemed with that pinched, sullen expression smoothed out.

It was one night, Draco tells himself. And it will only ever be one night, the most he could hope for and more than he ever deserves. The caravan is moving on, north towards Lake Zarovich; wherever Ivan is headed next, it’s hardly likely that their paths will cross again.

It’s over.

This time, he’s sure of it.

**X.  
**

“I _promise,”_ blurts Ivan three days later, all flustered stammers and twitchy hands, “I haven't been following you.”

They’ve been working side-jobs, he and his friends. To get their bearings, and pick up some much-needed coin. They hadn’t known when they’d agreed to deliver the Martikovs’ wine casks that it would bring them back to the vistani— to this vistana, in particular, it wasn’t as if they’d gone out of their way to— and it isn’t that he’d come looking for Draco, it’s only that—

“I like you,” Ivan says, looking nervous enough to puke, and it’s world-altering, _I like you._ “Come with us,” Ivan says, and Draco says, without thinking, “All right.”

He’s not a smart man. He doesn’t claim to be. But Ivan is, and Ivan does, and Draco knows, already, how this story ends. A silver-tipped knife. The stench of fear. Yellow eyes, the back of Ivan’s head.

At least one of them, he thinks, will have the good sense to walk away.

**XI.**

Naked and sated in their rented room in Vallaki, Draco closes his eyes, and listens to Ivan's rabbit-wild heartbeat begin to slow, and thinks, _this,_ in all certainty, _is the last time._

It can’t possibly happen again.

Ivan stretches lazily next to him, the sheets bunched up around his waist, sweat still drying at his temple. He runs one hand up Draco’s bicep, smiling faint, close-lipped, all the warmth in his eyes. He smells like sex. He smells like Draco. Draco never wants him to smell like anything else.

But it’s the last time, the very last time— it has to be, he doesn’t know what he’ll do if it isn’t. Confess something horrible, maybe. Confess to everything. Ivan likes him, enough to hold onto, and worse than that is the fact that Draco wants him to, desperately. Even when every breath taken alongside him feels stolen, collections of moments he was never meant to bear witness to: Ivan gesturing when he talks, Ivan tracing aimless patterns over his bare chest, Ivan straddling his waist, his shirt half undone. The drowsy slur of his voice in the morning, half-buried under blankets, curled up against Draco’s chest like he belongs there. Like he always will.

“Hey,” Ivan mumbles, kissing at the smooth skin of Draco’s shoulder, dragging the backs of his fingers up and down Draco’s arm soothingly. “Still with me?”

Draco blinks, rapidly, “Hmm?”

“You had this look. Like you were somewhere else, in here,” he taps Draco’s forehead, sleepily. “Thought I lost you for a minute there.”

 _Never,_ Draco wants to say, his throat closing around the word. It was Draco, after all, who had lost Ivan, long before they’d ever really met, before he had ever touched him. The moment his blood had curdled into something wild, when the wolf had made a home in his body, the day he’d seen Ivan behind that veil of smoke and had carried on with it all anyway—

He’s played pretend long enough.

It has to end somewhere.

“There you go again,” says Ivan softly, watching him. “What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing,” he says, and rolls until Ivan is pinned underneath him again, smelling sharp and sweet, smelling like want. “You.”

**XII.**

In the heavy, inescapable refuge of his tent, Ivan pushes the box of silver towards him, waiting for his answer. In the awful pitfall of his chest, Draco knows there’s nothing else for him but the truth. He can't smell the fear on him, not yet— just caution, curiosity, muted, uncertain. But the fear will come. It always does.

He doesn’t remember how he says it. Or whether he says it at all, at least not straight-out, _I’m not a good man. I’m not the man you think I am. I’ve hurt you, I could hurt you again._ And here’s the only part of the story that Draco has seen coming, the part where Ivan says, _enough._ The part where Ivan says nothing at all— different every time he’s imagined it, like the ending of some god-awful stage-play, each scene worse than the last. This is it, finale and call and curtain. The part where Ivan walks away.

He would do anything, Draco thinks, grief-struck. To have him, to keep this. Even for a little while longer, just a day or two, at least until sunrise.

But Ivan is looking at him like it hurts to, and he can’t stand it anymore.

“If _this,”_ Draco tries, gesturing between them. “If you and I, if you don’t want— I would understand, if you’d rather not—”

Ivan makes a sound, faint. Heartsick. He reaches for Draco, cradling his face in both hands, and when he kisses him it feels deliberate, and unwavering. Like a point he is desperate to make. Like proof, indisputable.

He had used to dream of his wolf, running free and wild. Sharp teeth, the iron taste of blood; Draco or the animal inside of him, no room for compromise. No room for anyone else.

Hours from now, in the dead of night, he’ll wake the way he always does, when the wolf lunges, jaws wide— but Ivan will be there next to him, sleepless, his book open on his lap, the oil lamp burning low.

And he won’t have to ask.

He’ll reach for Draco as if on instinct, stroking his cheek with the back of one hand. He’ll let Draco hold tight to him, one arm slung around his waist, breathing in the scent of his skin, kissing open-mouthed at the faint pulse of his throat until the frantic beat of fear in his own heart has gone quiet, and still.

He’ll fall asleep again with Ivan’s fingers carding through his hair. With Ivan humming faint, and off-key. And then he’ll dream of Ivan in dappled forest shadows, in open fields. Dancing wild-footed under swinging vistani lanterns, tipsy, laughing, tugging Draco down to kiss him. Smiling against his mouth and saying, _no one’s watching._ Saying, _I like you. I like you._

Here and now— before any of this, afraid to leave it unsaid, “Then you’ll stay?” Draco asks.

“I’ll stay,” says Ivan, voice rough, his eyes wet, “I’m staying.” And he kisses him again, for good measure, and again after that, and at last Draco stops counting, and waiting for the axe to fall, and he puts his arms around him and feels the ending shift, re-written.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/bygoneboy) for more werewolf/alchemist shenanigans


End file.
